They Stole My Batman

Every afternoon as a kid, I would run home from the bus stop, to watch my Batman. If you weren’t an early adolescent during the mid 90’s, Batman: The Animated Series (“TAS”) aired from 1992 to 1995, and it was brilliant. Developed by Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski, it had quality animation, voicework, and plotting. More importantly, it was my Batman, my childhood cartoon, and it set an impossible standard which no comic book television show, cartoon or otherwise, has ever matched. The broad subject of TAS was heroism. The aesthetic was film noir. The essence was Batman.

I rewatched TAS, and it is remarkable how well it holds up, both as a cartoon, and as a meditation on the heroic. TAS presents a compelling, humane treatment of a superhero who was above all else a humanitarian. The ass kicking was secondary — great, but secondary. Batman was a detective and, yes, a slightly superhuman ninja with vaguely magical technogadgets. However, his principle study was neither Crime, nor Vengeance, but the vagaries of the human condition. His enemy was what corrupted people, what lead them down a bad pass. He was an obsessive redeemer.

Every TAS villain, with one exception, was treated as a tragic, human figure. Clayface was a giant polymorphic rock monster to most. But to Batman, he was a wounded man, alone. Mr. Freeze was a grieving husband. Scarecrow was a victim of his own reckless experiments. Even the Joker was, to Batman, more a giant mass of scar tissue that had suffocated a human being than he was some evil force. Batman understood that he was himself almost a Batman villain. The loss he suffered did not merely fuel his obsession. It fueled his approach. He saw himself in his villains. He was always willing to do the hard work of empathy, and to reckon just how closely he and they danced along the edge of the Abyss.

The Origin of Batman.

One of my favorite episodes is “Harley’s Holiday,” (S03E06) in which Harley Quinn is released from Arkham Asylum on probation. Through a series of comical mishaps, she gets caught up in and railroaded by the system because of her past criminality. Batman’s arc in the episode is not to capture or defeat Harley Quinn, but to save her from a probation violation. He believes utterly in her chance to do and be better. Her rehabilitation was just as important to him as her original capture. When she asks Batman why he worked so hard for her, to save her from her “really bad day,” he replies, “I had a bad day too, once.” He used his pain to understand hers.

And consider one of the more iconic episodes, “Appointment in Crime Alley” (S01E12) The villain is Roland Daggett, perhaps the only major villain of the series who never enjoyed a redemptive arc. He was not a wounded soul like Harley Quinn or Mr. Freeze; he was a corrupt and venal plutocrat. His plot was to demolish a neighborhood in time to deliver a speech before a zoning board, and, through graft and eminent domain, destroy a block of people’s homes, and the free clinic which served them. His goal was to profit from the redevelopment.

Batman races through the titular Crime Alley, a ghetto of struggling, working people menaced by Daggett’s cartoon thugs. He defeats them, as he must, each step bringing him closer to Daggett himself. In the course, those thugs threaten the intrepid social worker and recurring character Leslie Thompkins, who is arguably a dearer friend to Bruce Wayne and Batman than even Alfred. When Batman finally confronts Daggett, thugs in tow, snitching on the industrialist jerk, Daggett escapes in plain sight. He is untouched, shielded by wealth and privilege, and Batman damn near loses his temper and goes off to reduce Mr. Daggett to a smug-shaped pulp. It’s Leslie Thompkins who stops Batman in his tracks.

She reminds him that they have an appointment to keep, which was what brought Batman to that neighborhood that night in the first place. Their appointment is at the gravesite of Thomas and Martha Wayne. There, Batman lays two roses. He stands side by side with Ms. Thompkins, the social worker who held him all those years ago, when he was just a boy named Bruce, after his whole world shattered. Leslie has her own moment of doubt there, grieving the old days of Crime Alley, when good people lived there. But Batman reminds her, as she reminded him, when he was a boy: “Good people still live in Crime Alley.” As far as Batman is concerned, good people will always live in Crime Alley.

The Apotheosis of Batman

I also recently re-watched all three of Christopher Nolan’s Batmans. At the time, I didn’t think too much of them — literally. They were perhaps the loudest, most thumping and pounding of Nolan’s movies. I liked them pretty well for what they were, good entertainment, like standing at the well of a nightclub. There was so much noise and so many rapid jump cuts, you could never fix on a single point. On a technical level, they had strong and weak points. (Heath Ledger’s Joker really is a truly amazing performance, RIP.) But on a philosophical level, they were just thumping noise and trumpets.

In hindsight, I was overly kind to these movies. Nolan Batman is an angry, growling man. His pain is a wall he hides behind, peering angrily at the world. He seeks no understanding. He has no empathy. His villains are murderous, insane, and, to the narrative, all categorically beyond redemption. In Batman Begins, he even leaves Ras al Ghul to die in what the trademark Nolan musical sting suggested was a Nietzchean moment of mighty hero praxis. It wasn’t. He just left a man to die, not even because he was a bad man, but Nolan Batman was angry. That anger was presented as a counterfeit dollar, like it was virtue. It wasn’t. He just left a man to die. That’s not Batman.

So many moments of Nolan Batman are written like heroism, but they aren’t. At the end of The Dark Knight, Commissioner Gordon gives a truly bizarre, now infamously parodic speech about the constructed nature of heroism to his own son (“he’s the hero Gotham deserves”, and other such nonsense). His son is terrified, was just held at gunpoint by a mutilated psychopath. But Gordon just blithely delivers his speech, in which heroes are mere inhuman symbols for lesser people to hide and rally behind, whose conduct is immaterial, whose truth is irrelevant. This is not Batman.

Finally, The Dark Knight Rises ends with an utterly confounding action scene where a bunch of cops in dress uniform have a fistfight on the steps of a neoclassical bank-looking City Hall. They fight a ragtag band of extras who look like Occupy Wall Street protesters who spent a decade on the road with Rammstein. There is nothing of heroism in this. There is no redemptive desire, no moral stance. This is just people punching one another, each wearing abstruse costumes ripped from headlines and iconography, then reassembled like a letter from a hostage taker. This, too, isn’t Batman.

Not my Batman

Batman — my Batman — occupies a moral space. He defends people, from criminals, and from themselves. His enemy is not the Riddler, or Bane. His enemy is the cruelty and destruction that produces Riddlers and Banes, and which goes on to keep them from redemption. He look at Harley Quinn not as a horrible menace, but as Dr. Harleen Quinzel, a clinical psychologist who he dearly hopes will return one day to sanity in full. His enemy is nihilism and vengeance, the idea and impulse that there exists a point at which reason and understanding fail, and people become monsters permanently. His enemies are the systems which produce those outcomes, which tie people to them, which reify pain and tie folks down. He hates noted philanthropist Roland Daggett, but he does not hate the Joker.

My hindsight is unkind to Nolan Batman, not because they were movies which didn’t age well. Rather, I dislike them in passing because they stole my Batman. They stole his ideals and better nature, then hid them with anger and loud noises and creeping protofascism. They made my Batman a Batman villain, and they never really sought to redeem him, like my Batman would. I see this thread in many current superhero movies, where violence and self-assured speeches and mere stagecraft take the place of humanity and empathy. It’s not a good look. Those movies made in that cast won’t age well, unlike my Batman.

24 Responses

The Batman of Batman:The Animated Series is the best because he is dark but not too dark. With the more grittier incarnations of Batman you find in the later comics and movies, you can’t quite believe he has a strict do not kill rule he adheres to. The Adam West version was too light-hearted to take that seriously. Batman of the Animated Series is serious but light enough where you can see him taking the do not kill rule as a cardinal value.Report

I liked both TAS and the Nolan films. The Batman of my childhood was Adam West, so there’s a chance I’ve just been ground down and gotten used to the many retellings of the story. Or maybe I was never too strongly wedded to “my” Batman, because it was a pretty lousy show.

But I’m more comfortable with reinventions of Batman than I am with those of probably any other superhero. It’s part of his story that he’s hard to define. He varies in shades of darkness, and even when he’s basically good, he exists in a surreal world of horrors. You can’t (easily) tell a Superman story in shades of gray; he’s got to be either white or black. With Batman, you’ve always got an ostensible hero who looks like a villain, and is cloaked in mystery. And is also somewhere between brilliant and devious.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the animated series, but I remember there was one episode that dealt with the different Batman legends. It was really well done. I’m sure you remember it better than I do. It didn’t try to define which Batman was real, and that’s a position I’m ok with.Report

The Animated Batman is absolutely delightful and is also my favorite… but it feels like it comes from a very particular moment in time: after the Cold War ended, before the Forever War started.

I like what Frank Miller had to say about Batman:

“There are 50 different ways to do Batman and they all work. In fact, I’ve probably done about ten of them. I was once asked if I felt like I’d been handed a Ming vase” when he first took on the character. “I said no, it’s more like an unbreakable diamond. I could smash it against the wall or ceiling without hurting it. It’s just a matter of finding a facet no one’s used before.”‘

Nolan’s Batman wasn’t about Batman, really, it was about 9/11. It was an attempt to process what happened in the wake of what happened.

I want to go back to the Animated Batman too. I prefer that moral narrative.Report

Re: some of the criticisms of Nolan’s dark, cynical Batman in the OP, I thought about a line John Reese delivered early in the show (season 1, maybe?): “Maybe there aren’t good people, maybe there are only good decisions.”* I think that line – which is cynical – captures where the Nolanses collective heads were at when making those shows/movies.

*And then he goes on to ask the guy he *really* wants to kill to help him make a good decision. Outstanding!Report

I thought I was a minority in my dislike for Nolan’s Batman. Whew. Even as a kid watching Adam West, I knew this was a campy version of the Dark Knight. TAS was so well done. The writing of course. And the animation was a throwback the the Fleisher cartoons that were ahead of it’s time.Report

It looks to me that beyond some noisiness and that one fight scene, the real complaint about Nolan is that his Batman operates in a different moral space than the TAS Batman. I take the praise of TAS’ Batman-as-redeemer, a sort of moral lifeguard, at face value.

The Nolan Batman is a vigilante. He is ultimately aimed to buttressing the forces of law and order, not necessarily the forces of moral good. And he has made the decision to use the tools of chaos against the agents of chaos. He knows he’ll have to get his hands dirty to do this but believes it necessary. Like all vigilantes, he sees the existing civil justice system as too weak to fulfill its purpose, and so he arrogates to himself the power of violence.

I see criticism in the OP of Batman’s decision to leave “a man” on the train to die. That man was Ra’s al-Ghul. The Nolan Batman has concluded that Ra’s al-Ghul is irredeemable, the justice system too vulnerable to his abilities (he would either bribe or escape from incarceration), and too dangerous to be left at large. I think the OP is right that Batman does not ever really seriously even consider rescuing Ra’s al-Ghul. The moral choice of redemption is framed thus: Ra’s al-Ghul is right that Gotham’s government is corrupt to its very core; his (ostensible, we may question his sincerity) solution is to destroy it utterly that something better might be created afterwards in its place. Batman sacrifices Ra’s al-Ghul that a different path towards a better, stronger Gotham might be pursued.

There are different permutations of aspiring to advance law and order through using the methods of chaos and evil in the second movie (which I agree had a ham-fisted ending) and the third (whose true moral hero was Catwoman, who was both redeemed and then became a redeemer herself, offering Batman love as an escape route from the unsustainable life of the vigilante).

What I’m saying is that you’re looking to the Nolan films to fulfill the same role as the TAS Batman did. Vigilante stories are inherently about flirting with fascism, the abrogation of due process. They’re inherently about a morally murky space between ends and means. So to appreciate them fully, you need to be comfortable with a resting point to the story that is gray rather than black or white.Report

I hate to be a nit-picker. But fascism uses fear within the context of populism, and lone vigilantes operate as elitists, whatever their personal status. Evil Batman isn’t a fascist; he’s a terrorist. Also, I love nit-picking. I love it so much that I’m compelled to point out that my claim to hate nit-picking is false.Report

Since we are all observers of Batman, you can think of the different ‘takes’ as merely observer perspectives. For the mugger who just got a knuckle sandwich from Batman, he’s a thuggish vigilante. For the mugging victim who just got saved, perhaps he’s seen as the savior or redeemer. But because Batman is human, and mysterious, he can be seen in so very many different ways.

Occasionally, there’s a Batman story told from the perspective of a low-level person. A henchman’s lackey or a kid in the projects. Their experience of Batman is that of The Little Guy and they see this formless demon capable of delivering great violence in the pursuit of preventing violence. Fear, awe, this sense of going up against a Force of Nature…

So, too, for Superman. But those stories tend to focus on how good superman is. Sure, he’s awesome, but he also radiates… decency. Like Mister Rogers. Except he’s bulletproof.Report

I agree completely with you on this. How they can get these characters so wrong is amazing.

The basic idea behind Batman should be “There, but for the grace of God, go I”. This is the reason why he always uses their names (usually their first names) when he talks to them. He is trying to reason with the person, not confront the monster.

Superman is also just as easy. His true weakness isn’t Kryptonite, it’s the squishy people he loves and desperately tries to protect. Making him into a callous, uncaring oaf takes away his only true limitation.

This is one of the reasons why I find the DC movies disappointing. Minor changes like costume tweaks or altered origins (like Spider-Man being bitten by genetically modified spider in stead of a radioactive one) are fine but they have to retain their cores or they are NOT Superman or Batman.Report

Yeah, the insight that Superman, deep down, is Clark Kent but Bruce Wayne, deep down, is Batman is an awesome insight.

(There was an issue of Wonder Woman where the three of them held the Lasso of Truth and each said their “real name”. Superman said both Clark Kent and Kal-El. Batman said Batman.)

When written correctly, both Batman and Superman think that the other one had disadvantages that would have crippled themselves, and when they look at themselves, they only see the advantages that the other didn’t have.

Too many writers see them as opportunities for self-insert fanfics. (Those can be fun stories for a moment, but they’re usually forgotten the second you put the comic book down.)Report

[…] meant to them growing up and what it means to them now. Then, we discussed the humanitarian and “obsessive redeemer” sides of Batman evident in TAS. Pulling from our therapist and attorney experiences, we delved […]Report

Religious Institutions. Religious institutions may resume services subject to the following conditions, which apply to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, interfaith centers, and any other space, including rented space, where religious or faith gatherings are held: 1. Indoor religious gatherings are limited to no more than ten people. 2. Outdoor religious gatherings of up to 250 people are allowed. Outdoor services may be held on any outdoor space the religious institution owns, rents, or reserves for use. 3. All attendees at either indoor or outdoor services must maintain appropriate social distancing of six feet and wear face masks or facial coverings at all times. 4. There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service. 5. Collection plates or receptacles may not be passed to or between attendees. 6. There should be no hand shaking or other physical contact between congregants before, during, or after religious services. Attendees shall not congregate with other attendees on the property where religious services are being held before or after services. Family members or those who live in the same household or who attend a service together in the same vehicle may be closer than six feet apart but shall remain at least six feet apart from any other persons or family groups. 7. Singing is permitted, but not recommended. If singing takes place, only the choir or religious leaders may sing. Any person singing without a mask or facial covering must maintain a 12-foot distance from other persons, including religious leaders, other singers, or the congregation. 8. Outdoor or drive-in services may be conducted with attendees remaining in their vehicles. If utilizing parking lots for either holding for religious services or for parking for services held elsewhere on the premises, religious institutions shall ensure there is adequate parking available. 9. All high touch areas, (including benches, chairs, etc.) must be cleaned and decontaminated after every service. 10. Religious institutions are encouraged to follow the guidelines issued by Governor Hogan.

“There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service,” the order says in a section delineating norms and restrictions on religious services.

The consumption of the consecrated species at Mass, at least by the celebrant, is an integral part of the Eucharistic rite. Rules prohibiting even the celebrating priest from receiving the Eucharist would ban the licit celebration of Mass by any priest.

CNA asked the Howard County public affairs office to comment on how the rule aligns with First Amendment religious freedom and free exercise rights.

Howard County spokesman Scott Peterson told CNA in a statement that "Howard County has not fully implemented Phase 1 of Reopening. We continue to do an incremental rollout based on health and safety guidelines, analysis of data and metrics specific to Howard County and in consultation with our local Health Department."

"With this said," Peterson added, "we continue to get stakeholder feedback in order to fully reopen to Phase 1."

The executive order also limits attendance at indoor worship spaces to 10 people or fewer, limits outdoor services to 250 socially-distanced people wearing masks, forbids the passing of collection plates, and bans handshakes and physical contact between worshippers.

In contrast to the 10-person limit for churches, establishments listed in the order that do not host religious services are permitted to operate at 50% capacity.

In the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic, there were hopes that the disease could be treated with a compound called hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). HCQ is a long-established inexpensive medicine that is widely used to treat malaria. It also has uses for treating rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. There had been some indications that HCQ could treat SARS virus infections by attacking the spike proteins that coronaviruses use to latch onto cells and inject their genetic material. Initial small-scale studies of the drug on COVID-19 patients indicated some positive effect (in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin). President Trump, in March, promoted HCQ as a game-changer and is apparently taking it as a prophylaxis after potentially being exposed by White House staff.

Initial claims of the efficacy of this therapy were a perfect illustration of why we base decisions on scientific studies and not anecdotes. By late March, Twitter was filled with stories of "my cousin's mother's former roommate was on death's door and took this therapy and miraculously recovered". But such stories, even assuming they are true, mean nothing. With COVID-19, we know that seriously ill people reach an inflection point where they either recover or die. If they died while taking the HCQ regimen, we don't hear from them because...they died. And if they recover without taking it, we don't hear from them because...they didn't take it. Our simian brains have evolved to think that correlation is causation. But it isn't. If I sacrificed a goat in every COVID-19 patient's room, some of them would recover just by chance. That doesn't mean we should start a massive holocaust of caprines.

However, even putting aside anecdotes, there were good reasons to believe the HCQ regimen might work. And given the seriousness of this disease and the desperation of those trying to save lives, it's understandable that doctors began using it for critically ill patients and scientists began researching its efficacy.

Why Trump became fixated on it is equally understandable. Trump has been looking for a quick fix to this crisis since Day One. Denial failed. Closing off (some) travel to China failed. A vaccine is months if not years away. So HCQ offered him what he wanted -- a way to fix this problem without the hard work, tough choices and sacrifice of stay-at-home orders, masks, isolation and quarantine. So eager were they to adopt the quick fix, the Administration made plans to distribute millions of doses of this unproven drug in lieu of taking more concrete steps to address the crisis.[efn_note]Although the claim that Trump stands to profit off HCQ sales does not appear to hold much water.[/efn_note]

This is also why certain fringe corners of the internet became fixated on it. There has arisen a subset of the COVID Truthers that I'm calling HCQ Truthers: people who believe that HCQ isn't just something that may save some lives but is, in fact, a miracle cure that it's only being held back so that...well, take your pick. So that Democrats can wreck the economy. So that Bill Gates can inject us with tracking devices. So that we can clear off the Social Security rolls. And this isn't just a US phenomenon nor is it all about Trump. Overseas friends tell me that COVID trutherism in general and HCQ trutherism in particular have arisen all over the Western World.

It's no accident that the HCQ Truthers seem to share a great deal of headspace with the anti-Vaxxers. It fills the same needs

In both cases, the idea was started by flawed studies. The initial studies out of China and France that indicated HCQ worked were heavily criticized for methodological errors (although note that neither claimed it was a miracle cure). Since then, larger studies have shown no effect.

HCQ trutherism offers an explanation for tragedy beyond the random cruelty of nature. Just as anti-vaxxers don't want to believe that sometimes autism just happens, HCQ Truthers don't want to believe that sometimes nature just releases awful epidemics on us. It's more comforting, in some ways, to think that bad happenings are all part of a plan by shadowy forces.

There is, however, another crazy side that doesn't get as much attention because their crazy is a bit more subtle. These are the people who have decided that, since Trump is touting the HCQ treatment, it must not work. It can not work. It can not be allowed to work. There is an undisguised glee when studies show that HCQ does not work and a willingness to blame HCQ shortages on Trump and only Trump.[efn_note]Not to mention the odd fish tank cleaner poisoning that has nothing to do with him.[/efn_note]

In between the two camps are everyone else: scientists, doctors and ordinary folk who just want to know whether this thing works or not, politics and conspiracy theories be damned. Well, last week, we got a big indication that it does not. A massive study out of the Lancet concluded that the HCQ regimen has no measurable positive effect. In fact, death rates were higher for those who took the regimen, likely due to heart arrhythmias induced by the drug.

So is the debate over? Can we move on from HCQ? Not quite.

First of all, the study is a retrospective study, looking backward at nearly 100,000 cases over the last four months. That's a massive sample that allows one to correct for potential confounding factors. But it's not a double-blind trial, so there may be certain biases that can not be avoided. In response to the publication, a group doing a controlled study unblinded some of their data (that is, they let an independent group look up who was getting the actual HCQ and who was getting a placebo). It did not show enough of a safety concern to warrant ending the study.

It's also worth noting that because this is an unproven therapy, it is usually being used on only the sickest patients (the odd President of the United States aside). It's possible earlier use of the drug, when the body is not already at war with itself, could help.

With those caveats in mind, however, this study at least makes it clear that HCQ is not the miracle cure some fringe corners of the internet are pretending it is. And it should make doctors hesitant in giving to people who already have heart issues.

As you can imagine, this has only fed the twin camps of derangement. The truther arguments tend to fall into the usual holes that truther theories do:

"How can this be a four-month study when we only learned about COVID in January!" The HCQ protocol started being used almost immediately because of previous research on coronaviruses.

"How come all of the sudden this safe medicine that people use all the time is dangerous?!" The side effects of HCQ have been well known for years and have always required consideration and management. They may be showing up more strongly here because it is being given to patients whose bodies are already under extreme stress. Also, azithromycin may amplify some of those side effects.

"They just hate Trump." Not everything is about Donald Trump. If it turned out that kissing Donald Trump's giant orange backside cured COVID, scientists would be the first ones telling people to line up and use chapstick.

The other camp's response has ranged from undisguised glee -- that is, joy at the idea that we won't be saving lives cheaply -- to bizarre claims that Trump should be charged with crimes for touting this unproven therapy.

(A perfect illustration of the dementia: former FDA Head Scott Gottlieb -- who has been a Godsend for objective analysis during the pandemic -- tweeted out the results of the RECOVERY unblinding yesterday morning and noted that it showed no increased safety risk. He was immediately dogpiled by one side insisting he was trying to conceal the miracle cure of HCQ and the other insisting he is a Trumpist doing the Orange Man's dirty work.)

In the end, the lunatics do not matter. Whether HCQ works or not, whether it is used or not, will be mostly determined by doctors and will mostly be based on the evidence we have in front of us. If HCQ fails -- and it's not looking good -- my only response will be massive disappointment. Had HCQ worked, it would have been a gift from the heavens. It is a well-known, well-studied drug that can be manufactured cheaply in bulk. Had it worked, we could have saved thousands of lives, prevented hundreds of thousands of long-term injuries and saved trillions of dollars. That it doesn't appear to work -- certainly not miraculously -- is not entirely unexpected but is also a tragedy.

{C1} The Christian Science Monitor looks at 1918 and how sports handled that pandemic, and the role it played in giving rise to college football.

"That's really what started the big boom of college football in the 1920s," said Jeremy Swick, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame. "People were ready. They were back from war. They wanted to play football again. There weren't as many restrictions about going out. You could enroll back in school pretty easily. You see a great level of talent come back into the atmosphere. There's new money. It started to get to the roar of the Roaring '20s and that's when you see the stadiums arm race. Who can build the biggest and baddest stadium?"

{C2} During times of rapid change, social science is supposed to be able to help lead the way or at least decipher what is going on. Or maybe not...

But while Willer, Van Bavel, and their colleagues were putting together their paper, another team of researchers put together their own, entirely opposite, call to arms: a plea, in the face of an avalanche of behavioral science research on COVID-19, for psychology researchers to have some humility. This paper—currently published online in draft format and seeding avid debates on social media—argues that much of psychological research is nowhere near the point of being ready to help in a crisis. Instead, it sketches out an “evidence readiness” framework to help people determine when the field will be.

{C3} There is a related story about AI - which is predisposed towards tracking slow change over time - is having trouble keeping up.

{C4} The Covid-19 does not bode well for higher education is not news. They may have a lot of difficulty opening up (and maybe shouldn't). An added wrinkle is kids taking a gap year, which is potentially a problem because those most able to pay may be least likely to attend.

{C5} People who can see the faults with abstinence only education fail to see how that logic (We shouldn't give guidance to people doing things we would rather they not do in the first place). Emily Oster argues that the extreme message of public health advocates to Just Stay Home is counterproductive.

When people are advised that one very difficult behavior is safe, and (implicitly or not) that everything else is risky, they may crack under the pressure, or throw up their hands. That is, if people think all activities (other than staying home) are equally risky, they figure they might as well do those that are more fun. If taking a walk at a six-foot distance from a friend puts me at very high risk, why not just have that friend and a bunch of others over for a barbecue? It’s more fun. This is an exaggeration, of course, but different activities carry very different risks, and conscientious civic leaders should actively help people choose among them.

{C6} A look at what canceling the football season will do to the little guys - non-power schools. Ironically, they may sustain less damage due to fewer financial obligations relying on the money that won't be coming in. Be that as it may, Fordham has disestablished its baseball program.

{C7} Bans on evictions and rental spikes could have the main effect of simply pushing out small investors, rather than protecting renters. In a more good-faith economy this would be less of an issue because landlords would work with tenants. Which some are, though I don't have too much faith about it being widespread.

{C8} Three cheers for Nick Saban. Football coaches are cultural leaders of a sort. One is about to become a senator in Alabama, even. What they do matters.

The American college experience for better or for worse revolves around the residency factor. We have turned college into a relatively safe place for young adults to the test the limits of freedom without suffering too many consequences. Better to miss a day of classes because you drank too much than to miss a day of an apprenticeship or job and get fired. College was cut short this semester because of COVID and colleges are freaking out about whether they can open up dorms in the fall. The dorms are big money makers and it is hard to justify huge tuition bucks for zoom lectures even for elite universities. Maybe especially for them. California State University announced that Fall 2020 is going to be largely online. My undergrad alma mater sent out an e-mail blast announcing their plan to reopen in the fall with "mostly" in person classes. The President admitted that the plan was a work in progress but it strikes me as a combination of common sense and extreme wishful thinking. The plan may include:

1. Staggered drop-off days to limit density as we return.

This sounds reasonable but only in a temporary way because eventually everyone will be back on campus, living in dorm rooms together, needing to use communal bathrooms and showers.

2. Students would be tested for COVID-19 on campus at least twice in the first 14 days.

There is nothing wrong with this as long as the testing is available. Our capacity for testing so far in this country has not been great.

3. Anyone experiencing symptoms would be tested immediately. Students who test positive would be cared for in a separate dormitory area where food would be brought to the room and where the student could still access classes remotely.

Nothing wrong here. Outbreaks of certain diseases are not unknown in the college setting. During my senior year, there was an outbreak of a rather nasty strain of gastroenteritis. Other universities have experienced meningitis outbreaks.

4. All students would take their temperature and report symptoms daily.

This one is also reasonable but is going to involve spying on students and coming up with a punishment mechanism. How will they make sure students are not lying?

5. We would also require that socializing be kept to a minimum in the beginning, with proper PPE (masks) and social distancing. As time went on, we would seek to open up more, and students could socialize and eat together in small groups.

I have no idea how they tend for this to happen and it sets of all my lawyer bells for carefully crafted language that attempts to answer a concern or question but also admits "we got nothing." Maybe today's students are more somber and sincere but you are going to have around 500 eighteen year olds who are away from their parents for the first time and another 1500 nineteen to twenty-one year olds who had their semester rudely interrupted and might now be reunited with boyfriends and girlfriends. Are they going to assign eating times for the dining hall and put up solo eating cubicles that get wiped down and disinfected after each use? Assign times to use laundry facilities in each dorm? Cancel the clubs? Cancel performances by the theatre, dance, and music departments?

I am sympathetic to my alma I love it but and realize that a lot of colleges and universities would take a real hit financially without residency. This includes universities with reasonable to very large endowments. Only the ones with hedge fund size endowments would not suffer but the last part of the plain sounds not fully thought out yet even if my college's current President admitted: "Life on campus will not look the same as it did pre-pandemic" The only way i see number 5 working is if requiring is read as "requiring."

Seems that the theory that Covid-19 can be spread by asymptomatic people has very shaky evidence in support of it. Turns out the case this assumption was made from was based on a single woman who infected 4 others. Researchers talked to the 4 patients, and they all said the patient 0 did not appear ill, but they could not speak to patient 0 at the time.

So they finally got to talk to her, and she said she was feeling ill, but powered through with the aid of modern pharmaceuticals.

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Today we couldn’t be happier to announce that Vox Media and New York Media are merging to create the leading independent modern media company. Our combined business will be called Vox Media and will serve hundreds of millions of audience members wherever they prefer to enjoy our work.

In a nation in turmoil, it's nice to have even a small bit of good news:

Representative Steve King of Iowa, the nine-term Republican with a history of racist comments who only recently became a party pariah, lost his bid for renomination early Wednesday, one of the biggest defeats of the 2020 primary season in any state.

In a five-way primary, Mr. King was defeated by Randy Feenstra, a state senator, who had the backing of mainstream state and national Republicans who found Mr. King an embarrassment and, crucially, a threat to a safe Republican seat if he were on the ballot in November.

The defeat was most likely the final political blow to one of the nation’s most divisive elected officials, whose insults of undocumented immigrants foretold the messaging of President Trump, and whose flirtations with extremism led him far from rural Iowa, to meetings with anti-Muslim crusaders in Europe and an endorsement of a Toronto mayoral candidate with neo-Nazi ties.

King, you may remember, was stripped of his committee assignments last year when he defended white supremacism. Two years ago, he almost lost his Congressional seat in the general. That is, a seat that Republicans have held since 1986, usually win by double digits and a district Trump carried by a whopping 27 points almost came within a point or two of voting in a Democrat. That's how repulsive King had gotten.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Enjoy retirement, Congressman. Oops. Sorry. In January, it will be former Congressman.

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From the Daily Mail: Deadliest city in America plans to disband its entire police force and fire 270 cops to deal with budget crunch

The deadliest city in America is disbanding its entire police force and firing 270 cops in an effort to deal with a massive budget crunch.

...

The police union says the force, which will not be unionized, is simply a union-busting move that is meant to get out of contracts with current employees. Any city officers that are hired to the county force will lose the benefits they had on the unionized force.

Oak Park police say they are investigating “suspicious circumstances” after two attorneys — including one who served as a hearing officer in several high-profile Chicago police misconduct cases — were found dead in their home in the western suburb Monday night.

Officers were called about 7:30 p.m. for a well-being check inside a home in the 500 block of Fair Oaks Avenue, near Chicago Avenue, and found the couple dead inside, Oak Park spokesman David Powers said in an emailed statement. Authorities later identified them as Thomas E. Johnson, 69, and Leslie Ann Jones, 67, husband and wife attorneys who worked in Chicago.

The preliminary report from an independent autopsy ordered by George Floyd's family says the 46 year old man's death was "caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain".

The independent examiners found that weight on the back, handcuffs and positioning were contributory factors because they impaired the ability of Floyd's diaphragm to function, according to the report.

Dr. Michael Baden and the University of Michigan Medical School's director of autopsy and forensic services, Dr. Allecia Wilson, handled the examination, according to family attorney Ben Crump.

Baden, who was New York's medical examiner in 1978 and 1979, had previously performed independent autopsies on Eric Garner, who was killed by a police officer in Staten Island, New York, in 2014 and Michael Brown, who was shot by officers in Ferguson, Missouri, that same year.

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Oddly, the video was dropped by an attorney friend the men, because he thought it would exonerate them. He assumed when people saw Aubrey turn and try to defend himself, everyone would see what they did: a dangerous animal needing to be put down.